We want to thank you all for the amazing show of support, and for helping us get the word out about our Auditorium 2: Duet Kickstarter. We couldn’t have done this without you. So as a show of gratitude, we have a couple goodies for you:

Yesterday’s flood of support for our Auditorium 2: Duet Kickstarter was unprecedented, completely unexpected, and couldn’t have been more timely! Not even day-1 saw this level of support. It’s as if a prayer had been answered. In just two days, Auditorium Duet gained nearly a third of its funding, putting it back on track for success!

The moment occurred last night just after midnight EDT. Each of us listening to The Final Countdown on loop while obsessively refreshing our browser windows, watching in excited disbelief as the numbers on our Kickstarter page continued to climb. Among a twitter of tweets and Facebook posts, we watched in anxious anticipation. Against the odds, Auditroium 2: Duet met its Kickstarter funding goal of $60,000 with only 72 hours to go!

We want to thank you all for the amazing show of support, and for helping us get the word out about our Kickstarter. We couldn’t have done this without you. So as a show of gratitude, we have a couple goodies for you:

Auditorium 2: Duet is currently 105% funded with 55 hours remaining before the Kickstarter project closes out. Be sure to make any last minute pledges now to take advantage of the exclusive rewards available through this Kickstarter.

First off, Auditorium has been updated on Steam! We’ve fixed a few bugs, and switched from CPU rendering to the GPU, meaning better performance and significantly smoother graphic quality. Check out the difference:

Sexy!

Now secondly, lovelies: it’s the final week of our Auditorium Duet Kickstarter! It has been an incredible journey thus far, and it’s not over yet. We’ve been truly touched be the outpouring of feedback and support we’ve gotten from both our fans and the community at large. The philosophy behind Kickstarter is one of community, respect, and altruism, and we couldn’t be prouder to have joined the Kicking It Forward pledge to use 5% of the profits from Duet to fund other Kickstarter projects.

But we still need your help to make Duet happen!

We are currently only 70% funded, but I really feel that a strong wind in our sails can get this schooner to port. So be it blog, tweet, tumble, like, post, instagram, semaphore, spray-paint, and limerick — every single eyeball helps! Thanks for all your help so far — let’s see this through to the end!

So our Kickstarter got off to a great start, and we raised over $10,000 in the first two days. But we hit the expected slump and we’re standing at 40% funding, meaning we still have to raise $36k in two weeks! But we are hopeful and working hard to get this Kickstarter funded (and we have faith in our wonderful fans!), because we really want to make Auditorium Duet an unforgettable experience for you. If you’ve enjoyed any of our other games, you can depend on us bringing the same creativity and attention to Duet.

New Rewards!

Since the last mailing list, the reward structure has changed.

Pre-Order: $15 pledges get you a pre-order of the game.

Duet Pack or T-Shirt:$30 pledges allow you to select either an extra copy of the game (the Duet Pack!) or a T-shirt.

Fractal Bonus!: ANYONE who donates at least $1 will get a PC/Mac copy of Fractal if you don’t already have one. And this is retroactive, so it applies to everyone who has already donated!

T-Shirt + Duet Pack?: We haven’t included a specific T-shirt + Duet Pack reward, but because a number of people expressed interest, if the Kickstarter is successful we’ll include an extra checkbox where you can add $10 to your pledge and get the shirt as well.

Higher Level Rewards?: We also changed around some of the $200+ pledge rewards.

How You Can Help!

Support the Kickstarter!Visit the Kickstarter, watch the video, reminisce fondly about Auditorium, Pulse, and Fractal, and pledge for rewards! You can pledge anywhere from $1 on upwards, and a $15 pledge will get you the game itself! If the Kickstarter isn’t fully funded you don’t get charged and we don’t get any of the fundraising (but we also don’t get to make the game!). If just 5% of the people on this mailing list pledged $15 dollars, our Kickstarter would jump up over 30%. If 10% of you pledged for the game, we’d be funded!

Spread the Word! We also need you to spread the word about our Kickstarter! We’re a young studio and we have to rely on grass roots efforts like word of mouth and networking, which can be very powerful, but we have to get the ball rolling! So please forward this email to anyone you think might be interested, whether they be family, friends, or colleagues. Post about our Kickstarter on Facebook, Twitter, on your blogs, or on any of your favorite sites and forums. Let people know how much fun you’ve had playing our games in the past! Every little bit helps!

It’s been three days since the launch of our Auditorium Duet Kickstarter, and we’ve been floored by your support! As of this blog post over 400 people have offered to put together almost $16,000 to help Auditorium Duet get made!

We’ve also been very grateful to Joystiq.com for running a series of articles on our project, which have all generated a lot of discussion among readers about our project and the Kickstarter trend in general, you should definitely check them out!

So what’s up next? We’re almost 26% funded, with four weeks left to go. It’s a lot of money (far more than we were expecting at first!), but we’re already exiting the “big backer bump” from the initial release, and now we’ve got a long, hard road ahead.

We are giving this our all! We’re reaching out to every contact we have, we’ve got some publicity initiatives (videos and fun stuff!) up our sleeves, and we’re listening to your feedback and trying to tailor our rewards to make Auditorium Duet as appealing as possible to everyone. Don’t fret if you’ve commented and we haven’t responded! You will hear from us!

So please help us out and continue to tweet and comment and blog about the Kickstarter! Reaching out in a thousand different ways can generate an astoundingly powerful response, and it’s what we’re depending on! And we know we can depend on our fans!

Our first game, the one that started our whole crazy game-making careers, is finally available as a PC/Mac downloadable title!

As we’ve mentioned in previous emails, prior purchasers will have the option of receiving a free Steam Key to unlock the game through the Steam system, downloading the game from the Cipher Prime Store, or continue playing it through the web interface on the Auditorium Game page. Like with Fractal, we’re still working out details with Steam, but barring catastrophes we expect you guys to be able to get your hands on some CD-Keys in the next week or so. We’re also going to be changing up our sites in the coming months, so keep posted for news!

Important Update!Steam keys are now available for all previous owners of Auditorium: The Online Experience! Just follow these instructions to redeem:

The official Kickstarter page is live, so go on and check it out! For those of you unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it’s a fundraising website where creators can pitch their project ideas to the public and offer special rewards as a ‘thank you’ to backers who help fund the development of those ideas. Kickstarter has more thorough explanations over on their FAQ page, and some examples of other awesome projects as well.

Auditorium Duet will have its roots in Auditorium, but it’s going to be bigger, better, and — most importantly — it’s going to be multiplayer! The initial release is planned as a PC/Mac standalone, but we will be considering cross-platform support from the beginning; we’re just waiting to gauge interest and determine hardware requirements.

Please pledge what you can for the Kickstarter and we promise we will put our hearts into making this game! Without this funding, we won’t be able to afford making it, which will totally bum us out. Be sure to leave comments, and as always we are open to feedback! We’ll be posting frequent Kickstarter updates on our blog (not the mailing list), so check back frequently for the latest info. Thank you all for your support!

So how can you help out at this stage? Talk to us! Ask us questions! Email us, reach out to us on Twitter, post on our blog, just let us know what you think about Auditorium 2! And be sure to tell all your friends — we need all the help we can get!